Expert on SCO future and Shanghai spirit of co-operation
Belarus actively participates in many international organisations. Political scientist Aleksei Belyaev tells us what this gives us, as well as how regional and global structures will develop further.
“The rigid position of the collective West, which put its ‘golden billion’ above the rest of the seven billion of mankind, turned the globe into a ‘world-system’, described by Immanuel Wallerstein as a relationship between the core and the periphery, where the Western core sucks like a vacuum cleaner, ruthlessly and methodically, all resources from peripheral countries, without even giving them a chance to develop; this position led to the fact that these peripheral countries began to create instruments of collective defence.”
“China has become the undisputed leader in the opposition to the robbery of its own territories, which, through the policy of soft power, economic and cultural influence, as well as through the awareness and articulation of its own interests, has managed to create an alternative to the Western vector. China’s Belt and Road Initiative led to the formation of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. In the Asian region, the SCO primarily helps to resolve a number of border disputes and unite states to settle problems related to terrorist threats and drug trafficking. Meanwhile, the SCO has also become an organisation that has demonstrated new approaches towards economic interaction: without twisting arms and overt desire to use its counterparties, bringing them to the state of a ‘squeezed lemon’. The Shanghai spirit just manifests itself in mutual respect and consideration of the interests of all participants, in the proposal of mutual economic and transport and logistics co-operation with non-interference in internal affairs and without imposing one’s own idea of the rules of life and political structure. As a result, we see a serious and rapid expansion of this organisation,” the expert noted.
“At the same time, of course, after some time it will be necessary to expand the political institutions and instruments of SCO influence, since rivals in the form of the EU and the USA will oppose this association in every possible way. In this regard, the experience of the Union State of Belarus and Russia, whose participants are SCO members (our country has recently applied for the status of a full member of this organisation) can prove useful as a model for further integration and building new models of relations between the SCO member states. Of course, taking into account all the features and peculiarities of the member countries, since direct copying is impossible here.
